A Crazy Sort of Day
by Taisi
Summary: Sai had a small idea what to expect of his new school. His first meeting with Naruto Uzumaki ruined it completely. AU SaiNaru
1. Prologue

A/N: For those of you who don't know me, HI HELLO I'm Tai and this is my billionth Naruto fic ever; despite that, though, it may suck 'cause it's totally AU and I'm trying a bunch of new stuff out. I love AUs. C:

It's SaiNaru. Because I love them both. And I love them together. There may be other minor pairings along the way (all of them slash, yo) but I haven't decided yet. ANYWAY, let's get this party started.

_Prologue_

Strangely enough, the most popular person in school is a guy named Naruto Uzumaki. Strange, because he doesn't exactly fit the "popular" profile.

He's attractive, sure, with his sun-kissed skin, angel-blond hair and impossibly blue eyes; even the scars on his face are cute. But he's loud and simple; undoubtedly clever, but more likely to come up with an ingenious prank than score above 90 on any test. He wears obnoxious orange sneakers that don't accord with the school's dress code, and his uniform is worn out and scuffed at the knees (and he never wears his tie). He disrespects teachers, barely does his homework, bullshits his way through every presentation...

...and everyone adores him.

And everyone means _everyone - _every clique kind of overlaps where he's concerned. He belongs to none of them and at the same time he belongs to them all.

For example.

The group of people he surrounds himself with includes Shikamaru Nara and Neji Hyuuga - resident _geniuses _of Hidden Village, notorious loners and much more likely contenders for "Mr. Heartthrob" - and even they regard him as a friend. But its not just the populars.

Kiba Inuzuka, a punk and a (suspected) druggie, hangs out with Naruto on the school steps before school. He doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks about him, everyone wonders why he even shows up half the time, and he doesn't ever say or do much to add or take from his present image, so most of the teachers have given up on him. He sits with Shino Aburame in every class.

Shino was born mute but brilliant and already has a scholarship lined up to take him all the way through college. He keeps to himself and no one really bothers him; the only person he won't ignore is Kiba, despite how radically different they are from each other. No one's even sure how they met. But whenever Naruto flops down next to him with something to say, Shino will turn his head slightly and listen.

Chouji Akimichi is cheerful and kind-hearted, chubby and constantly snacking. He's been Shikamaru's best friend for as long as anyone can remember. Unsurprisingly, kids used to make fun of him for his weight. Used to, because when Shikamaru found out, he called out every one of the faceless bullies who were so much braver in a crowd, cold, dark and calculative. And when Naruto stepped up next to him, arms folded, bright eyes fearless, Lee at his side, the name-calling stopped.

Lee Rock and Naruto are close, though no one's entirely sure why. Lee has an amazing figure, and he can do the sort of gymnastics that should only exist in movies. He's tall and fast, and the best player the school has in just about every sport. He openly admires Neji, having looked up to him since they were both kids, and trails the prodigy relentlessly. The thing about Lee is that he's had to work for _everything _he's got, whatever that means. Maybe that's why he and Naruto have a mutual respect for one another? He'll drag Naruto out to the school grounds during lunch to play soccer, and sometimes Neji and Kiba will join in.

At some point, every social barrier just kind of dissolved. His inner circle - the friends he keeps closer than the rest - are nothing alike. But they met on common ground (Naruto) and gave each other a chance for his sake. Looking at them with each other, you'd think they've all been friends forever.

And it's because of him. The idiot savant who can barely hold a C average, who positions buckets of water above doorways, who hangs out with pot-heads and cheerleaders both in the space of five minutes.

After a week of silent study, newly enrolled Sai has never been more baffled by anyone in his life.

tbc

A/N: If I don't get anything else up before the day is upon us, Happy Valentine's Day! C:


	2. Chapter One

A/N: Wow, you guys are still with me? Nice, nice. Not bad at all. Sooo Valentine's Day was fun. I spent the day before buying/making stuff for my buddy-pals, and the day itself, ironically, having a huge breakup with a friend of several years. xD The Universe is hilarious at times.

Okaaay, onto story-relevant stuff. Enjoy the new chapter!

_Chapter One_

Sai held his new schedule open, even though he had his classes memorized, because that's what the new student was expected to do (look lost and overwhelmed) and he wanted to make it easy on his new peers when they approached him with a feigned eagerness to help. Since that's what kids did at stuffy boarding schools like this.

He'd been there for about seven minutes, and he'd learned several things. The school – a ridiculously huge campus made up of several large buildings all connected to one another – was divided into three sections; Leaf, Sand and Sound. Since the students seemed to mingle for the most part, Sai could only figure that the division had to do with where you were from – the desert, forest, or industrialized state, Fire Country's three major districts. Sand and Sound were kind of exclusive; Sai was lucky Leaf had taken him, since he didn't really come from anywhere. But despite that, he wore a silver leaf pin on his lapel and, to all appearances, belonged.

His pin was probably what caught the eye of the cheerful brunette walking the opposite way down the hall. She approached him with a smile, a fellow leaf, judging from the pendant on her necklace, and offered to lead him to his class.

"You're lucky," she said with a playful kind of envy when they'd reached a door marked "GEN". "You're in Mr. Hatake's class. _Everyone _wants to transfer there."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sai replied, with a smile that made her blush. "Thank you."

And he pulled open the door, fully expecting to see a classroom full of sharp-looking students, looking up from leather-bound textbooks and heavily disapproving of his three-minute tardy -

"Oh, shit—DUCK, NEW KID!"

He dodged to the side on pure instinct, and narrowly avoided contact with something that instead went hurtling through the doorway into the hall. A splash and a shriek prompted Sai to close the door quickly behind him.

Laughter erupted from the class and hands were reaching out to pull him farther in when all he did was stand there mutely. "Well done," a pretty, pink-haired girl told him, approval glittering in her eyes. "_Nice _reflexes."

"I had a brother growing up," Sai replied promptly, acting a lot more confident than he felt. Truthfully, he was well off his game.

Hidden Village High School is _the most _prestigious school in the country. Kids come from nations all around the world to enroll here; telling any employer you're a graduate of HVHS is pretty much securing any job you want. Students drop from the roster like flies; it's almost impossible to make it through the whole course – it's too demanding for most, and if you can't hack it, room has to be made for someone who can.

This was information he _knew; _he'd done research on this school that lay nestled in the center of Fire Country, protected by a circle of impossibly tall walls, found all the information about it that he could when he'd found out he was lucky enough to have been accepted. The best funding, the best reputation, the best teachers – he had expected the atmosphere to be intense, suffocating, the students to be mindless work drones, unfriendly and unrelenting. He'd expected the rules to be enforced with an iron fist, no exceptions on dress and hair codes especially.

But no, there were girls with pink hair, boys with face tattoos; uniform jackets draped over chairs or tied around waists, sleeves rolled up to the elbow or shoulder. Necklaces, earrings, bracelets, hats and bandanas – there was nothing uniform about it.

And was the teacher _seriously_ late for his own class?

"You look lost," a chubby boy informed him, looking sympathetic. "That's alright. It'll take some getting used to."

A tired-looking boy was leaning against the fat one, and rolled his eyes at the ceiling as he muttered, "Though in retrospect, lobbing water balloons at anyone who happens to open the door isn't exactly a golden idea, hey, Kiba?"

"Screw you," came the cheerful retort from somewhere in the middle of the room; Sai couldn't make out who it was, "_that _was awesome. Besides, I thought it was Dropout."

"Oh, he's coming back today!" The atmosphere in the classroom almost visibly shifted into excitement, and everyone started talking at once (like before, but with renewed vigor). Even the lethargic boy cracked a smile.

"I wonder how he'll react to you," the pink-haired girl mused, giving Sai the once-over. Sai frowned slightly, letting his confusion show on his face.

"Who?"

And, as if on cue by the all-knowing, omnipresent Universe, the door swung open and every head swiveled in its direction expectantly. A very tall, gray-haired man stood on the threshold and gave a little wave at the sudden attention; every student groaned.

"Dammit, Hatake!" someone yelled, thoroughly startling Sai out of all semblance of knowing what the hell was going on.

"Sorry to disappoint," he said, looking amused. "I take it I'm not who you were expecting?"

"You know damn well—" This was Kiba (Sai recognized his voice by now) and he didn't very far down his current track before a boy in dark glasses stepped forward and covered his mouth. The boy didn't say anything, but his arm around Kiba's neck seemed to speak volumes; Kiba stilled, and quieted with a grumble.

"Ahh, thank you Mr. Aburame." Their teacher seemed to be laughing quietly. Sai couldn't tell, because the lower half of his face was covered with a cloth mask—but his eyes seemed to smile. The bespectacled boy's only response was to lead Kiba back to their seats.

"But where is he, Mr. Hatake?" A round-eyed young man sporting a bowl cut was sitting on his desk, kicking his dangling feet restlessly. His tennis shoes were forest green. "He's coming back today, right? You said he was coming back today."

"He's in the office right now, Lee, talking to his mother."

Sai didn't understand the bubble of laughter that followed that remark, but decided not to question it. The mood was considerably lighter now, and the teacher did nothing to stem the happy/excited chatter.

_Who is this "Dropout"?_

"Ah. So you're Sai."

Hatake's eyes were dark, though the left seemed slightly off-color, and fixated on his own. "Yes, sir."

"I'm betting you feel a little out of your depth right now."

There was no denying that, so Sai replied, "Yes, sir."

"This school isn't exactly meeting your expectations so far?"

"Right, sir." The class snickered, and Sai shrugged mentally. He was used to people laughing at him.

"And you wish you knew why my class looks more like a detention cell than anything else."

"Very much, sir."

"You're an honest guy, Sai."

"Thank you, sir."

The class laughed outright. "Hatake can't catch a break!" Kiba was holding his sides. "Every student he gets isn't even _almost _afraid of him!" The silent boy next to him wasn't laughing, but seemed content enough to allow Kiba to. The bowl-cut kid was giggling too, sneaking glances at the pale-eyed guy next to him, who, to Bowl-cut's apparent relief, looked somewhat amused himself.

Hatake looked unimpressed, but still (somehow) unruffled. "Being respected by underlings has always been a dream of mine. A far-fetched one, apparently, but such is life." His eyes moved back to Sai now, who was beginning to regret his transfer. "I wonder how he'll take to you," the teacher murmured quietly, as if to himself.

But the pretty girl heard him and sat up a little straighter. "You don't think he'll be angry, do you?" she asked suddenly, and her green eyes were concerned. For what or whom, Sai was uncertain.

"How can we presume to predict the unpredictable?" The gray-haired man wandered in the direction of his desk. "He'll probably surprise us all, as usual."

"Things have been so quiet around here without him," the chubby boy piped up, a small smile curling across his face. "It'll be good to have him back." The lazy boy leaning on him grinned, muttering something that sounded like _'that idiot'._

Since apparently the teacher wasn't going to give him a seat, Sai made his way to what that seemed like an empty one. Bowl-cut smoothly kicked a chair out of his way and gave him a one-thousand kilowatt smile that left Sai blinking. For some reason, this caused Pale-eyes to narrow said eyes at him and Sai quickly took his seat.

He was horrible at understanding people as it was, and no one around him seemed halfway close to normal.

The sound of the door opening again was almost lost under the rest of the noise. Sai glanced up in time to catch the shock of bright blond in the doorway before the new arrival called out in Hatake's direction, "Sorry I'm late, Mr. Kakashi! Mr. Iruka had a lot to say." He was thin and naturally tan; his hair was bright and unkempt, falling over his eyes and around his ears in soft spikes, and his face was scarred on both sides, the pencil-mark lines curving three across each cheek like whiskers. There was a smile on his face and in his eyes as he took in the roomful of people; Sai was hard-put to decipher the depth of emotion there.

So he contented himself to watching him closely. _This _boy was someone important, even if Sai didn't know why; it was obvious in the way the room seemed to immediately orient itself around him upon his arrival. He looked like nothing special, but the voices of his classmates swelled and rose to him like a tide to the beach, and they converged upon him all at once, laughing and shouting and reaching out to touch his arm or hug his shoulders or ruffle his hair like they hadn't seen him in months—

And without warning, those blue eyes were on his, clear blue and full of fire.

When he spoke, his voice carried across the room and all the surrounding noise melted like winter in the face of spring.

"So you're that bastard's replacement, huh?"

tbc


	3. Chapter Two

A/N: I AM SO SO SO SO SORRY. I SUCK, COMPLETELY. This update took a long time, and I'm really sorry. School was kind of crazy, and graduation took a lot out of me, but now it's summer and I don't start college till August so BAM! I'm back. C:

Things will start to move quickly in this chapter, to prepare you for the upcoming slow-down. :D

_Chapter Two_

As a general rule, Sai just didn't get close to people. It wasn't because he had any particular reason to _dislike _people, and he didn't—people, for the most part, were very worthwhile. But Sai grew up with nothing, had never had anything, and the only person he'd ever known for any extended period of time disappeared one day ten years ago and never came back. So he figured that, while dwelling was pointless and life wasn't meant to be missed, people couldn't really be counted on in the long run.

So he remained detached enough from people that they wouldn't creep close enough to hurt him. It was a just—a principle he lived by. He didn't think himself _above _them, per se, or below them. He was just _apart_ from them. When interaction was mandatory and couldn't be helped, he never knew what to say or how to act without offending someone, or hurting someone somehow, always blurting out the immediate truth (and he was never without an opinion), even when the immediate truth seemed to be the wrong answer. He didn't have that _skill _most people do in being with others, that skill you're almost born with—the one that adapts you even as a baby, meeting your parents and learning that you love them.

It was the consequence of being untouchable, and it was all he'd ever known.

But as a certain blond-haired boy with an oddly scarred face and too-bright eyes looked at him for the first time from across the classroom and asked Sai if he was good enough to be there, Sai felt, for the very first time, at a loss for words. And when that boy tilted his head a little, in a gesture close to concession, and asked, "Do you _want _to be good enough?" Sai wondered.

He wondered, sitting there on his own in a small room cluttered with desks and chairs and windows that seemed too wide, if he wanted to be good enough. For what, he didn't know, and it didn't really matter, he decided as he stared into blue. That part would come later.

_Is it worth it? _he though as he gazed at them, his new class, possibly looking a little stupid just sitting there without an answer.

It was a question that was incredible in its magnitude, left him standing at the threshold of the world as he knew it, scared, somehow, somewhere, to open the door that had _always _been just within his reach.

But those eyes were steady, incurious and at the same time so passionate Sai could hardly believe they were looking at him. They compelled him to—_what?_

To change his view of the world completely, all in the space of a few minutes?

_It feels like I could._ The possibility was terrifying and he said, "Yes," and changed his life completely in the space of that one simple word.

The boy regarded him a little thoughtfully, nodded, and then—smiled. "I like him," he announced cheerfully to the room as a whole, and Sai sat there a little dazedly, feeling out of breath. His expression earned him a chorus of friendly laughter and without warning, for the first time in his life, the group converged upon him, making him a part of it instead of an outsider; Naruto stayed up front to talk to the teacher, and Sai couldn't take his eyes off him.

"Don't worry," a blond girl told him with a smile, leaning her elbows on his desk. "He has that affect on all of us."

He didn't know, as he stared transfixedly at a foxlike grin, if that was supposed to comfort him or not.

_As of about a minute ago, I don't know anything._

* * *

Naruto was everywhere.

And since he seemed to come with his own force of gravity that drew Sai along like a puppet, Sai couldn't help but take notice him wherever he was.

He was a part of _everything, _he was friends with everyone. Helped out with just about every club in the school, though he wasn't _technically _a part of any himself. Confused with your homework? He'd pull up a chair, pop open a book and be confused right along with you. Some jerk just tripped you in the hall? Don't worry about it, he'd get something five times worse by lunch.

He was a bright, bouncing ball of pure energy, all smiles and laughter and fucking sunshine and _how did a person like that exist?_ But he was there, too there to deny he was, always making each moment anywhere doing _anything _richer than it would have been without him.

He avoided Sound kids like the plague.

He didn't talk about his family.

He never invited anyone home.

He followed Sai around relentlessly, asking him question after question with the sincerest curiosity that Sai couldn't find it in his heart to deflect. So he answered them, the best that he could, as honestly as he could - scared to lie and get _caught _in a lie, scared to see disgust, anger, hurt cross that beaming face, that remarkable boy turn away.

_Something's wrong with me._

He didn't let people affect him like this.

_But he thinks I could be good enough._

For what?

_Does it matter?_

* * *

"He and Uchiha were about as close as you can get." Shikamaru—the lazy-looking boy—spoke with almost no inflection; but his eyes were steely as he dropped his head carelessly back onto Chouji's shoulder and gazed listlessly at the ceiling, betraying something that went far deeper than anger. "But then Uchiha went and betrayed him. He betrayed all of us, but it cut Naruto the deepest."

Kiba clenched his hand into a fist so hard it looked painful. "I swear to God if I ever see that bastard again, I'll rip out his throat."

They were sitting together in the GEN classroom during lunch period; the girls had gone off somewhere with playfully scornful glances over their shoulders that suggested the boys would do well not to follow. So they oriented themselves in the corner of the room, around Sai's desk, though he wasn't sure why, and dragged out their lunches. Naruto, for whatever reason, had been borne along by the girls, and Sai felt safe enough in Naruto's absence to ask after his predecessor in the school roster. From his new peers' reaction, that Sasuke Uchiha was _not _well-liked.

Sai stored all this information away, unable to help himself dwelling on a certain pair of blue eyes, and what they must have looked like full of hurt. He glanced down at his notebook, weighing his words with his tongue before he ventured to ask, "And...Uchiha—he just disappeared? Without a word?"

Lee nodded, youthful face gone strangely still and silent. Neji said quietly, "No word to any of us. Sakura was waiting for him at the gates, but he—deflected her." There was a lot more to that than Sai was allowed to know, for the moment at least, and he let it go. "Naruto tore after him. It's not safe outside the walls, and Lord knows we would've given anything to convince him to stay—"

"But with Naruto, things don't work like that," Shikamaru finished with an air of graceful resignation. "So instead, we helped him. Didn't do any good, and Naruto still got hurt."

"The bastard," Kiba hissed again. "How do you even _do _that to someone? String them along for so long and then- _dammit_."

Sai didn't flinch when the fist came down hard on his desk, though he would've liked to. He glanced at the others' faces and realized his Q&A session had created a pretty bad atmosphere. For some reason, this made him feel bad. "I'm...I'm sorry, I shouldn't have- "

Lee nudged him with his shoe, finally smiling. And despite only having known him for a few days, Sai couldn't help but think Lee didn't look right without a smile. "Hey, you're one of us now. You have the right to be nosey."

"To an extent," Neji conceded dryly.

"Shut up, you." Shikamaru sounded half-asleep, and Chouji seemed to be his designated human pillow. Neji glared at him, and Kiba muttered something that made Shino hit him, but all Sai could see was comaraderie.

_This school is so strange._

It's day five, and Sai begins to feel like he could get used to it.

tbc


End file.
